Shas­tri Boodan

Bomb­shell e-mails in­volv­ing re-elect­ed Fed­er­a­tion In­ter­na­tion­al Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion (FI­FA) pres­i­dent Sepp Blat­ter is ex­pect­ed to send shock waves through the foot­ball fra­ter­ni­ty to­day as the As­so­ci­a­tion's sus­pend­ed vice pres­i­dent, Jack Warn­er speaks out. Vow­ing that he will be ex­on­er­at­ed from the foot­ball scan­dal fol­low­ing the rev­e­la­tion of a se­ries of e-mails, the Ch­agua­nas West MP has promised that it will send shock­waves through­out the world. View­ers are ex­pect­ed to be glued to their seats from 1 pm to­day as they lis­ten to live ra­dio broad­casts of Warn­er's ral­ly on six ra­dio sta­tions lo­cal­ly. Tele­vi­sion sta­tions are al­so ex­pect­ed to car­ry the ral­ly where Warn­er de­fends him­self in the rag­ing con­tro­ver­sy. He has cho­sen his con­stituen­cy, among his sup­port­ers-at Ju­bilee Recre­ation Ground at Ca­can­dee Road, Fe­lic­i­ty-to speak out. He is ex­pect­ed to spend the day in his con­stituen­cy where he will take part in a mo­tor­cade in cel­e­bra­tion of In­di­an Ar­rival Day.

He will then ad­dress sup­port­ers on In­di­an Ar­rival Day and on his sus­pen­sion from FI­FA. In a shock­ing move last Sun­day, the world's foot­ball gov­ern­ing body sus­pend­ed Warn­er and Qatar's Mo­hammed Bin Ham­mam amidst bribery al­le­ga­tions. Warn­er has since deemed the sus­pen­sions as il­le­gal and un­just, promis­ing to clear his name. The Works and Trans­port Min­is­ter was at his con­stituen­cy of­fice yes­ter­day where he lis­tened to the cries of more than 300 peo­ple seek­ing as­sis­tance on var­i­ous mat­ters yes­ter­day.

Speak­ing to the Sun­day Guardian, Warn­er ad­mit­ted he was moved by the throngs of peo­ple at the Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port on Thurs­day on his re­turn from Zurich. Warn­er said he was com­mit­ted to serv­ing the peo­ple of T&T. "I re­main eter­nal­ly grate­ful to my sup­port­ers. It is good to have friends not on­ly when you are up but al­so when you are down." The Min­is­ter how­ev­er, main­tained that calls by the Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment and the Con­gress of The Peo­ple (COP) can­di­date for him to step aside un­til be­ing cleared of the al­le­ga­tions are un­found­ed. Warn­er said: "Ra­mad­har wants him to go, while Ra­mad­har's Prime Min­is­ter sup­ports the Ch­agua­nas West MP." He said Ra­mad­har used the op­por­tu­ni­ty to gain po­lit­i­cal mileage in the up­com­ing COP in­ter­nal elec­tions that may end up work­ing against him in the long run.